The NFL has shattered viewership records over the holiday period with the Kansas City Chiefs, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce at the forefront of the league’s growth against the Las Vegas Raiders
The Kansas City Chiefs played a part in shattering an NFL viewership record with their Black Friday game against the Las Vegas Raiders.
The NFL enjoyed a record-breaking holiday period, dispelling concerns of a dull Thanksgiving Day matchup as it recorded its most-watched games ever. The Chiefs-Raiders showdown saw a significant increase in viewers compared to last year’s Miami Dolphins-New York Jets game.
NFL’s Black Friday experiment proved successful for the second year running, with Amazon Prime Video hosting the game and seeing a huge 41 percent rise in viewership. The Chiefs’ narrow 19-17 win over the Raiders attracted an average of 13.51 million viewers, peaking at 17.43m at 6pm ET.
This is a considerable jump from last year’s fixture on the same day, with the allure of watching the 11-1 defending back-to-back Super Bowl champions proving to be this season’s biggest draw. The Chiefs’ on-field performance, coupled with Taylor Swift’s off-field romance with Travis Kelce, has boosted the Chiefs’ and the NFL’s reach.
Prime Video’s growth across the NFL this season has continued, with viewership up again, marking a third year of substantial growth for the streaming service’s pro football coverage. Thursday Night Football has also consistently outperformed all competing broadcasts each week.
Ahead of the Black Friday game, the Pittsburgh Steelers-Cleveland Browns game on TNF drew a crowd of 13.72m viewers. Prime Video reported a 24 percent increase in viewership from the last time these two teams clashed on TNF in 2022, which attracted 11.03m viewers.
The NFL also enjoyed high ratings on Thanksgiving Day, with an average of 34.2m viewers tuning in to watch three games across FOX, CBS and NBC, slightly surpassing last year’s 34.1m viewers. The Sports Business Journal reports that FOX had the highest peak viewership, with 38.8m people watching the New York Giants defeat at the Dallas Cowboys.
This was the fourth-highest viewership for a Thanksgiving game on record and the fifth-highest for an NFL regular-season game since 1988. However, the Giants-Cowboys game saw a seven percent drop from the 41.7m viewers who watched the Washington Commanders-Cowboys clash on CBS last year.
CBS recorded the highest viewership for an early Thanksgiving game ever as the Chicago Bears lost to the Detroit Lions, leading to Matt Eberflus’ dismissal following disastrous game management. The game averaged 37.5m viewers, an 11 percent increase from the Green Bay Packers-Lions game on Fox last year, which held the previous early window record with 33.7m viewers.
The Dolphins-Packers game, aired during prime time on NBC, averaged 26.1m viewers, marking a three percent decrease from last year’s 26.9m for the San Francisco 49ers-Seattle Seahawks match, but still showing an increase from the previous year’s 26m for the New England Patriots-Minnesota Vikings showdown.